The Highest-Grossing Movies of All-Time

You can learn a lot from looking at Box Office Mojo’s list of the highest-grossing movies worldwide in history. Among the 50 biggest blockbusters as of this writing in February 2018, there are a couple of trends (Superheroes! Star Wars! Movies made in the last 10 years!) and plenty of surprises. Like The Hobbit! All three parts of The Hobbit are on here. Remember The Hobbit? I saw them all, and I barely do. Martin Freeman was in them, I think? There was a dragon around for a while, too? Doesn’t matter; they each made in the neighborhood of $1 billion worldwide.

No doubt you know that the biggest film ever is still Avatar, James Cameron’s 3D alien hullabaloo. (If you want to know why they’re making four more of those movies, it could be because the first movie is not only the biggest hit ever, it’s the biggest hit ever by more than $500 million.) And you probably know Cameron’s Titanic is still the solid #2, and one of only three movies in history to gross more than $2 billion in theaters. (Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the third.) But did you know that five of the ten biggest movies ever were released by Disney? Or that Furious 7 is the sixth-biggest film in the history of cinema? Or that The Dark Knight Rises made more money than The Dark Knight? These are all true facts. And you will no doubt be surprised by more you discover in this full list of the 50 highest-grossing flicks all-time. (And, again, this is internationally; just in the U.S. is a very different list.)